On January 28th, 50 children and young people from the 21st district in eastern Cali, started classes at the Clubhouse which is part of the Tecnocentro Cultural Somos PacÃfico.
The Clubhouse is a program created by the Boston Science Museum in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The Clubhouse Network “is an international community with more than 100 Clubhouses located in 20 countries, that annually provides 25,000 young people with life-changing opportunities for the past 25 years.”
The mission of the Clubhouse is to provide creative and safe extracurricular learning environments, where young people from vulnerable communities can work with adult mentors to explore their own ideas, develop new skills, and build self-confidence through the use of technology.
In addition to developing individual and group projects based on the interests of the participants, they are trained to improve their quality of life. An example of this is Yeison David Angulo, a young man who recently started classes with the program. Speaking about the program, Yeison said, “the Clubhouse is a space where what you have is valued, many opportunities are created and you make new friends that bring good things into your life. I would love to learn how to use Photoshop and gain more experience in the Cinema 4D software. ”
The Somos PacÃfico Clubhouse’s Creative Industry Manager, Carlos Rueda Quintero, says that 2020 will be a great year for the program. Carlos expresses his desire to “continue encouraging participants to learn science and technology in a dynamic and practical way so that the projects they develop contribute to solving some of our social problems”.
In this third year of the program three young participants will attend the World Teen Summit, from July 14 -19, an event held every two years in Boston by the worldwide Clubhouse network, inviting young leaders to share their information technology and communications projects, explore new cultures and propose innovative use of new technologies.